DADI- Donor Against Donor Insemination

2006-04-07T01:46:00.000-07:00

When I was the age my son was then...

I set off on a similar journey to a somewhat larger island.

I was just eighteen years old in August 1969
when I set sail from Melbourne on the Sitmar liner Fairstar
to England via the Panama Canal.

I was only six months out of high school
but already I had been arrested three times
and been technically convicted once
for daring in one way or another to protest
against the brutal war in Vietnam.

And now I was also a draft dodger
choosing exile over commitment
because really I was just a kid
with a passion for poetry.

On that early Spring evening
as my ship manoevred through the waters of the Bay
I watched the skyline of Melbourne recede into the distance
and knew with all the certainty of youth
that my life was only just beginning.

My father had seen me off at the docks
but would not stay to see the ship slowly
pull away festooned with streamers which one by one
would snap and sever that last link between the adventurer
and those they left behind.

For my birthday he had given me
a watch engraved with my name
and had also invited me to choose
from his collection of old wallets
one which would suit me
now that I had become a man.

Within that sheaf of leather I kept the folded photo
of my father and mother on their wedding day
which he had also just bequeathed to me
for what purpose I could not then quite fathom.

They stand there in a semi-formal pose:
my father in his best suit, the fingers of his right hand
at his side nervously clenched, those of his left completely surrounding
my mother's right hand which he holds stiffly
at a point just below his left rib cage.

My mother is petite and glowing.
Her high cheek bones shine above her smile.
She wears a wide bonnet framing her hair
which must have been permed for the occasion
into large thick curls which extend almost
to the collar of the tunic
embellished with a sea star-like pattern
which she wears atop her plain knee-length skirt.

Behind them in the photographer's studio
a set of floor to ceiling curtains have been slightly
pulled apart to reveal a bare white wall.

It is as if they are about to bid farewell
to turn around and step into that naked whiteness,
to begin to colour it, to animate it with shared experience.

But there is something troubling and tawdry
about the faded mock Persian rug on which
they stand, not least of which is the kink
which has been left to rise quite mountainously
between their two sets of feet.

On the back of the photo my mother had inscribed
in her flowery hand: With our Love ~ Betty & Arthur.
Beneath her dedication my father has now printed for me...

WALKER
22 MEADOWCROFT AVENUE
OFF SKIPPERS LANE
ESTON

This is my mother's new surname and her address.

My father tells me he does not mind if I set out to find her
to return to her at last...

I watch the lights of the city
twinkling now on the dark horizon.

I have entered the dream of my future.

2006-03-10T12:39:00.000-08:00

A Father to My Son

At one end of the room my son sits in uncomfortable isolation.
At the other a man stands facing him, interrogating him,
in an increasingly aggressive manner.

I am standing to one side of his interrogator,
my wife and her son nearby me.

How long have I known him now: this young man
who is a part of me and I a part of him?

Only a year up to this point, perhaps,
but already he has become dear to me.

The man who raised him and pretended
to be his father has come to my home
not just ostensibly to discipline my son
but also to subtly establish his priority over me.

With every harsh word he stabs at my son
I wince with inner pain but yet I feel
I cannot protect him, I cannot intervene.

With his every word, however,
this man diminishes himself.
He shrinks in my estimation.
He no longer deserves my respect.
He is nothing to me.

Within a matter of weeks
my son will set out on a journey alone.

For many months he will live
an almost hermit-like existence
in an isolated part of Tasmania
caring for animals at a sanctuary there.

When he returns I can see that he has changed.

He knows now where he belongs.

2006-03-04T22:51:00.000-08:00

1963

The few books remaining in my father's collection
which he had carried halfway around the world to Australia
were mostly novels about navies and the sea.

Some of the first adult books I read, therefore, were the works
of Herman Wouk (The Caine Mutiny) and C.S. Forester (Brown on Resolution),
and those of a man with the most intriguing of names,
Nicholas Monsarrat (HMS Marlborough Will Enter Harbour
and The Ship that Died of Shame).

I am not quite sure why but it was that latter title, itself,
that resonated most with me at the time.
Perhaps it was something to do with the incongruity
to my adolescent mind that a thing composed of metal and wood
and bristling with weaponry could actually be so anthropomorphised
as to feel the very human emotion of shame
and that it might actually die as a consequence.

I cannot now recall anything at all about the details of that tale
but what I do remember is that the endpaper of the book
was curiously somewhat thicker than any of the other pages.

I think I must have let that mystery lie for many months or so
but one day I could resist my curiosity no longer
and carefully prised the endpaper apart from the frontispiece
to which it had in fact been glued around the edges
and discovered my father's secret.

Written there in a beautifully curling and obviously feminine script
was a dedication to my father on the occasion of his birthday
and that this present was a gift of love from Betty.

How I used to linger over every line and every word
of that lovingly inscribed message from the past.

For a long time it was my only concrete link to my mother.
Her presence was palpable there.

For one short space in time, she had concentrated her energy
transforming that empty page into what had now become her memorial.

2006-02-24T00:35:00.000-08:00

November 21, 2001

Dear M-------

I have only just received your letter today.
I don't understand why, but for some reason
the hospital has delayed more than a week
in passing it on to me.

I am writing you this necessarily hasty reply
so I can mail it tonight as I am leaving
for Sydney in the morning.

First, I must say how thrilled and honoured
I felt in finding out quite by chance
that you were seeking me.

So I, too, must therefore thank you in return
for the diligence and persistence you have shown
in your quest such that I now have the welcome opportunity
of connecting with yourself and your brother.

For, I must stress, I have no qualms at all
about meeting you - if you so wish -
if only that you might satisfy your curiosity
about what I look like!

However, I can tell you right now
that when I saw your photograph in the paper
I had no doubt at all that you were my daughter:
you look very much like I did at your age -
my hair was even the same length as yours.

Since time is running very short
I think I will quickly parallel
what you have written to me.

So, a brief biography:
I was born in 1951 (28th June)
in the North Riding of Yorkshire, England,
into an upwardly mobile working class family
(well, my mother, at least, had higher aspirations).

I have one brother, John, who is two years older
than me. In 1958 my parents divorced and my father
emigrated to Australia with myself and my brother
in 1959 (although we came separately via a child
migrant scheme).

I never saw my mother again until Easter this year.
My father never re-married and raised us completely
on his own in Melbourne in the 1960s.

At high school I matriculated in Science
but narrowly saved myself from doing
a BSc at Monash University in 1969.

In the end it didn't seem right for me,
besides the 60s was a pretty exciting time
and I decided instead to go back to England
on my own and take a look at 'swinging London'.

A year later I returned to Melbourne
and shortly afterwards met, and later married,
the mother of my three daughters.

From '74 to '78 I studied for an honours degree
in English Language and Literature
at Melbourne University, during which time
my first two daughters were born
and I became a sperm donor.

Subsequently, I have also completed in 1997
a post-graduate honours degree in Linguistics
and English Language Studies.

Now, however, I am self-employed as a baker
in the vegan bakery I operate with my new partner,
Lia, and her son, Liam.

To answer your questions:
Yes, I too am left-handed and the only one
in my immediate family.

As for the artistic streak:
Well, I belong to that endangered species
known as 'Poet' although, like yourself,
I have also had more than a passing interest
in photography and architecture.
Not surprisingly, all three of my daughters
have a similar bent.

To tell you the truth
I can't recall whether I was offered
the choice of anonymity.

I am certain, however, that I was not availed
of any formal nor even informal discussion
of my rights or responsibilities as a donor.

In fact I was never completely sure, subsequently,
whether the sperm was used purely for research
or for donor insemination itself.

I entered the donor program because a friend of mine
was already in it and I guess it seemed
like a socially useful thing to do.

Although, I must admit, I never seriously considered
the ramifications of what I was involving myself in
at the time. But now here I am and...so are you.

I hope this hasn't been too perfunctory.
It is now five to six and I must print this out
and dash to the mail box.

I really hope you receive this letter
without any further delay.

Please feel free to bypass the hospital
and write to me directly if you wish
or, even better, phone.

My best wishes,

Michael

2006-02-15T01:09:00.000-08:00

November 12, 2001

Dear Michael,

There's a lot I would like to say to you
but the first word I think should be thankyou.
Thankyou for the gift of life but thankyou also
for coming forward.

I honestly did not expect to receive a response to my article.
I had come to terms with the fact
that I might never know your name.

My only wish is to know a little more about myself.
Please understand that you do not have to meet me
or correspond further than letters if you don't feel comfortable.
Though I am very curious to know what you look like.

I guess that you might like to know a bit about me.
I was born in 1981 at the Royal Women's Hospital.

I have been very lucky.
I grew up in West Gippsland on a 20 acre property
overlooking the Toomuc Valley, where I still live.

From the age of two I had my own horse
and rode competitively until I was 17.
I dreamed of going to the Olympics
like every little pony clubber.

I went to the local primary school
and then a private school nearby.
I completed my VCE in 1998.

I have always been very artistic.
I did ballet and then children's theatre for a while.

I dreamed of being an architect
and then an interior designer
but I excelled in illustration and design
and this is what I went on to study.

I graduated this year as a graphic designer
and in between my two jobs as a bartender
and child care worker I am looking
for a full time job.

As you would know from the article
I also have a full brother.
He will be 18 in December.

He has blond hair and blue eyes like me
but is a little taller and skinnier, like a rake.

He has ADHD.
He has a lot of trouble reading and writing
and dealing with complex issues such as DI.
You may have got the impression from the article
that we don't know where he inherited this from.
But we know for sure that he got it from mum.

He loves his motorbike(his freedom machine)
and is naturally athletic unlike me.
He left school in year nine and now works
as a blacksmith.

He knows how he was conceived
but does not yet know that I have your name.
Mum will tell him tonight perhaps.

You may be interested to know
that his name is Michael.

I have just a few questions for you to start with.
Please don't feel pressured to answer them.

Is anyone in your family left-handed?
(I'm a leftie but my brother, my mum and all her family
are righthanded)

Are you, or is anyone in your family artistic?

What did you study?

Where you given a choice as to whether
you wanted to be an anonymous donor?

Why did you donate?

Where are your family from?

I hope this is not too hard for you.
I only found out in March how I was conceived
so I too am still coming to terms with the fact
that you exist.

Please know that I am not looking for another father
only information. But I think of you now as a friend.

From my brother and I:
thankyou again for coming forward.

I hope to hear from you soon.

MW

2006-02-11T16:52:00.000-08:00

To say goodbye

I turned away from the window...

A tree which stood by the front fence
became an image

Of the very last time I saw my mother
in tears

The same tears I wore as a garment
for thirty-three years

Its leaves silently falling...

And I could not be certain
if my mother had no more autumns to give

Or if winter that year
would lay more than enough snow

On the long-dead bird
at the bottom of the garden

2006-02-11T15:06:00.000-08:00

1960

By the time I was ten years old
the memory of my mother
had been almost obliterated.
Apart from the indisputable fact
that both my brother and myself
walked upon this world
and therefore must once have been born
it was if the woman who had given us life
had never existed.

My father ran his own Ministry of Propaganda:
any reference to our mother was expunged
from our past and present lives.
No photographs or documents existed
which might serve to remind us
that once we had enjoyed
the comfort of a mother's love.
And implicitly we knew
that we must not mention her
in any way.

At the end of 1959, my brother and I
embarked from the port of Tilbury in Kent
to sail for Australia aboard the SS Strathaird
of the Peninsular and Oriental Line.

Within the space of less than two years
our feeling of family had been whittled away
until finally we had become child migrants:
ostensibly orphans under the temporary
care and protection of the Fairbridge Society.

Just before Christmas the small group
of children with whom we were travelling
arrived in Melbourne and were then
transported overland to the Fairbridge Farm School
near Molong in New South Wales.

We only spent six months there
but for two young boys aged ten and eight
it might as well have been six years.

Decades later when the tragedy of child migration
had been rightly exposed for the abuse that it was
I was informed by a social worker assigned to
the task of counselling former child migrants
that my my brother's and my own case
did not qualify for assistance because unlike
others less fortunate we had only spent
a short period of time in the hell that was Fairbridge.

I wanted to tell her that after the first month of
systematic neglect, exploitation and endemic bullying
it no longer mattered how long it persisted
for by then the damage was already done
after which it became merely a matter of endurance
and the counting off of the months and years remaining
before the long-term inmates could legally claim the right to leave.

And I also wanted to tell her that although
I wasn't quite certain what damage the experience
had wrought on me, I knew that within two years
of our departure from that wretched place
my brother began exhibiting the first symptoms
of the mental illness that would see him
spend the rest of his life in institutions suffering
the ravages of ECT and chronic medication.

I am sure they would all say they were only doing
their job: the well-remunerated professionals,
the middle-class men and women who counselled my father
that he was doing right by us in giving us a better life
than we could ever hope to have if we were to stay in England:
they who would make decisions on our behalf that would affect us
for the rest of our lives.

And my father who likewise convinced himself
he was doing the best for us but who also
somewhere unacknowledged inside himself
saw our migration as a way of punishing my mother
for her transgressions and her crime
forever.

By the time I was ten years old
the memory of my mother
had been almost obliterated.

But I still remembered the day in 1957
when they took my brother and I
to say goodbye.

2006-02-06T00:18:00.000-08:00

Father

The weight of my father lies heavy in my bones

My father my father so heavy in my bones

When will he come to me to give me what he owes

My father my father to give me what he owes

2006-02-04T23:49:00.000-08:00

August 2001

My name is M------ K------- W-----.
I thought I was of English/Irish descent.
I believed I had my dad's strong legs,
his nose and his youthful looks.
My seventeen year old brother
thought he had dad's skinniness
to blame for his lanky frame.
We both thought we knew who we were.

On the third of March this year
my mother told me
I was conceived using DI.
My brother was told in June.
He is not interested in the issue.
But he does have the same donor as me.

My parents were divorced this year
and had been separated for three.
I have little or no contact with my father.
We do not speak.

In this letter I would like to state my wish
of continuing the search for my donor.
I would like to emphasise the fact
that I am not looking for another father.
My dad is who I see as my father.
Even if my relationship with him is not the best,
he is all I have known for twenty years.

So far the telephone book,
Victorian electoral rolls
and the Registry of Births,
Deaths, and Marriages
have been searched.

Would it be possible to search
the Australian electoral rolls?
Other states' Registries?

Is it possible to advertise
at the universities?
(My donor was a student)
Could the services of an adoption
search agency be involved?
Are there staff that would
have been working in the clinic
at the time my donor was there?

Could the hospital advertise
for previous donors in print media,
on the internet or on TV?
Is it possible that my donor
could have donated at other clinics?
Is there additional information
about my donor on my half-siblings' files?

These are just a few of my suggestions.
I think about this every day and it frustrates me
that I can't know my donor's name
and that I will probably never meet
my half brothers and sisters.

I would like to see an informative
public awareness campaign
and support network put in place.
DI is the oldest form of assisted
reproductive technology
but it is a poor cousin to IVF.

Who knows about it?
Who talks about it?
Perhaps if the public knew
about this complex issue
families would be able to discuss it
openly with their children and avoid
the confusion, anger, and loss
that I and many others have felt
when told in difficult circumstances.

I am hoping that you will
do everything you can
to help me.

M------

2006-02-04T22:53:00.000-08:00

Mother

She drifts like tears through my world
I am uncurled

She spends her days beyond the sea
Searching for me

She left my life but never died
I cannot hide

2006-01-31T01:41:00.000-08:00

I remember first the curve of a grassy hill plummeting into the sea...

I was born in Yorkshire, in Saltburn, by the North Sea.
Six years before, the man who would become my father had been invalided out
of the Royal Navy, his stomach ulcerated and his spirit broken.

He was a working class boy who had enlisted at the age of sixteen.
On the back of a photograph of him with his fellow matelots
on board HMS Hood a proud battleship of the Mediterranean Fleet, he declares romantically:
"Now my schooldays are over, the work begins in plenty."

But that was in 1938. He did not know then that within three years
he would be escorting convoys in a corvette across the icy Atlantic
or that, eventually, he would find himself in the crew of a small landing craft
foundering under heavy fire as it ferried troops to the landings in Salerno.

He never recovered from the loss of his naval career.
It had been a way of cheating his class destiny.
But now he would return to the factory and the steel mill.

I have been told my mother was from the south.
Why her family made their way north I do not know.
But her manners would always mark her as an alien in that rough
industrial terrain. She would always yearn for something better.

They met and married and settled by the blue-green sea.
They had one son and then another.

One day they moved inland to a drab, grey town.
They bought a semi-detached house on an embankment
overlooking a busy main road.
Just opposite ran a railway line which traversed a deep stone bridge.
Beyond the bridge lay rows of terraces and beyond them loomed
the towers and chimneys of the steelworks and chemical refineries
discharging fire into a polluted sky.

He found a job as a signalman on the railways.
Then he became a process worker at the refinery.
Day after day he would ride his bicycle to work and back.
She stayed at home and looked after the children.
Sometimes she would have her friends to tea.

At the rear of their house there was a lane.
In one direction it led past a wasteland
pitted with derelict air raid shelters
and, finally, to a row of slum terraces.

Just beyond their back gate, in the opposite direction,
the lane meandered past much finer houses than hers
with large well-kept gardens the like of which she could never hope to own.
In one of them lived a young man in his twenties.

They became lovers.

2006-01-28T18:30:00.000-08:00

November 10, 2001

A young woman is sitting by an ornamental lake.
To her left a large pendulous plant with long narrow leaves
dominates the middle distance.
Its leaves trail in the water which shows only the slightest ripple.
Behind her, two whitish-coloured birds have alighted
and are frolicking on a pathway.
It is a tranquil scene. A calm, sunny day in late Spring.

The lake is edged with flagstones.
The young woman's sandalled feet extend slightly over the water.
She is wearing jeans and has drawn her legs up almost to her chest.
Her arms rest loosely on either side of her knees.
Her right hand softly clasps her left just above her ankles.
What appears to be a bracelet is just visible below the cuff of her windcheater.

The photographer has captured a moment of quiet contemplation.
The woman is staring fixedly at something just outside our range of view.
Her eyes are intelligent and have a questing look.
Her brows are wide, and from over her high forehead her blonde hair falls,
curling where it meets her shoulders.
Her neckline is long, her chin and jaw are striking and determined.
Her mouth displays the faintest glimmer of a smile.

But there is not just one young woman but two in this photograph.
Her image has been repeated, reflected in the water of the lake.

If we turn the photograph upside down
we see what at first seems to be the same person.
But the pendulous plant is now to her right and, quite remarkably,
there are no birds visible frolicking in the background.
Instead there are three, or possibly four, unadorned broad stone columns framing a view of a metal fence with a blur of trees in the distance.
It is still a sylvan scene but it now wears a sense of menace.

In the slight distortion brought about by the gentle rippling of the water
the young woman's demeanour has been transformed completely.
Her head now declines markedly to the left.
She seems hunched and insecure.
Her eyes are vague and apprehensive, perhaps recently tearful.
Her mouth is set in a grimace of anguish.

The level flagstones have become a slight slope
on which her stability no longer seems so certain.
It looks as if she might have sought solace there.
But everything is filled with uncertainty.

I am drawn to the young woman's image with a compulsion
which I cannot quite crystallize.
She seems incredibly familiar as if I had once known her in my past.

Suddenly I realize she is my daughter.

2006-01-27T23:35:00.000-08:00

Lying to the young is wrong.
Proving to them that lies are true is wrong.
Telling them that God's in his heaven
And all's well with the world is wrong.
They know what you mean.They are people too.
[ 'Lies' - Yevgeny Yevtushenko]

In 1957 my mother suddenly disappeared from my life.
I was told that she had 'gone away'.
I did not see her again for forty-four years.

For weeks and months and then years, I waited for her to return.
But she never did.

Often I would cry myself to sleep at night but all my tears
could never fill the emptiness she had left.

At other times I would send my thoughts to her across mountains
and seas and beg her to come back. But she never did.

Eventually I buried my sorrow as deep as I could.
My mother had gone away. But she still dwelt within me.